monoceros blogs"An Open Door" by William Reichard, from This Brightness.
Across the sanctuary of a community church
a door stands ajar; stained glass windows
allow only some of the sun to enter; filtered
yellow, red, opalescent green drench the pews.
On the altar converted to stage, a circle of
students contemplates a question of vocation.
Through the open door, only light, daytime
invading the intimate dim familiar in churches,
the hazy quality of the house of god.
When a child, I wanted to be a vampire.
Or a scientist. Or an actor. The world
seemed open to me in a way it does not
seem open now. What is your passion,
the facilitator asks and students giggle.
What drives you? I try to focus
on the question at hand, but lose myself
in the sunlight streaming in through
the open door. In this, a sanctuary,
I don't feel safe. What do you want
to be when you grow up? Not a teacher,
certainly; not a soldier; not a poet.
Who lives in the gray corners of a church
besides mice? What is that face in
the stained glass? When in college,
I wanted to be an archaeologist, wanted
to dig into the storied dirt of time and
come up with some history. In this room
I want to be a priest. It could be comforting,
living in the dark spaces of a church,
just me and the mice. What is your
vocation, the facilitator asks and
at this moment, I'd say, I am
a bringer of light; a man who stands
in a doorway flooded by sun;
I am a bird; someone who learns,
in shadow, the real shape of brightness.
Dozens of critics and thousands of audience members couldn't be wrong - "Once" is certainly one of the great films this year.
EW's Owen Gleiberman says it best - "In a year when Hairspray and Sweeney Todd arrived on the big screen with fervor and panache, John Carney's wee gem of an Irish indie brought off something miraculous. It invited you to swoon the way that only a great musical can. Yet it did so quietly, realistically, with nothing more than two lost souls — a 30ish Dublin busker and the coltish Czech émigré he meets in the street — gathered at the piano, or in a recording studio, to declare the tender ardor they can express only through music. A lot of movies make you cry; this one makes your heart burst."
It's incredibly annoying trying to find something and not succeeding. Instead, I come across things that I was looking for weeks or years ago, like three pairs of gloves. Three pairs! I couldn't even find one in time for my trip to Japan. Too, I recently unearthed a skirt that I'd been missing for the past two years.
Yesterday, I was hunting for a canvas book tote that I use on train rides. I'm sure it'll re-appear one day, though I hope sooner rather than later. I can remember the novel inside - Charles Baxter's Saul and Patsy - but not the location. What I want is neither the book nor the bag; it's a photograph that I left inside the front pocket of the book tote.
I should've remembered that a person can spend a long time waiting for something, despair of the waiting, and then unexpectedly, and often at a very wrong time, it turns up. Thinking about this reminded me a little of Linda Pastan's "Waiting for My Life," which, thankfully, I could find on my shelf with no trouble at all (in any case, this seems to be a week for Linda Pastan poems).
"I waited for my life to start
for years, standing at bus stops
looking into the curved distance
thinking each bus was the wrong bus;
or lost in books where I would travel
without luggage from one page
to another; where the only breeze
was the rustle of pages turning,
and lives rose and set
in the violent colors of suns.
Sometimes my life coughed and coughed:
a stalled car about to catch,
and I would hold someone in my arms,
though it was always someone else I wanted.
Or I would board any bus, jostled
by thighs and elbows that knew
where they were going; collecting scraps
of talk, setting them down like birdsong
in my notebook, where someday I would go
prospecting for my life."
More faithful
than lover or husband
it cleaves to you,
calling itself by your name
as if there had been a ceremony.
At night, you turn and turn
searching for the one
bearable position,
but though you may finally sleep
it wakens ahead of you.
How heavy it is,
displacing with its volume
your very breath.
Before, you seemed to weigh nothing,
your arms might have been wings.
Now each finger adds its measure;
you are pulled down by the weight
of your own hair.
And if your life should disappear ahead of you
you would not run after it.
I wrote about "Once" half a year ago, listened to the soundtrack often enough but gave up hope of the film being screened in Singapore. It wasn't until I met my friend Nigel for lunch on Friday - during which he talked about "Once" and how he loved it - that I decided I should get round to watching it.
"Once" is set in Dublin, a city that attracts and welcomes traveling musicians, like Mexican guitarists Rodrigo and Gabriela. Our protagonists are a pair of musicians who meet on a street, though only one of them is actually playing music. The Irish guy is a street busker, singing and playing his guitar for passers-by, while the girl, a Czech immigrant, sells flowers from a basket. She sees him singing late one night, and intrigued by the song and his passionate singing, asks him questions like who he wrote it for and what happened to the woman. When she finds out he fixes Hoovers for a living, she insists that he help her with hers, and returns the next day to the same spot, dragging her dark blue Hoover behind her like a small pet. He's a little annoyed at her persistence until he finds out she's a classically trained pianist and wants to hear her play. They wind up at a music store where the owner kindly lets her play the piano for free since she can't afford to own one. When she plays Mendelssohn for the guy, he's stunned by what he hears. Eventually, he offers up the score of a song he's written, sings her the basic chords, and as he begins strumming his guitar, she joins in with the piano. He sings the first few lines, and when she tentatively adds an accompanying harmony, he's a little surprised but pleased. It's an amazing scene that begs repeat viewings - the music seems simple but the melody is strong and full of yearning; the lyrics hint at the story to come; the guy and girl get caught up in the profound experience of playing a song together for the first time and realizing how much they enjoy it. It's such a genuine, unexpected moment for them and for the audience.
What I love about the film is how everything appears so unrehearsed and unforced. The actors aren't professionals and this could have been a documentary for all I knew. It's true to life, where drama doesn't always escalate in a romance that begins at a wrong time. Despite their intense connection through music, there are other people in their lives - he's thinking about a former girlfriend and she has an estranged husband.
(Skip the jump if you don't want to read any spoilers.)
It's a bittersweet end where after she helps him make a recording to take to London (before this, he decides ultimately to look up his old girlfriend in London and become a professional musician there), he wants to spend his last few hours with her, but she backs out of meeting him. The end is little more than a kiss on a cheek and a farewell gift of a piano. He doesn't even get to say goodbye to her. But when her face lights up at the sight of the piano, when he smiles as he walks to catch his plane, thinking about her seeing the piano; when she plays the piano while her husband, newly arrived in Dublin, plays with their daughter, I thought it a perfect ending. The final moment shows her finishing her song on the piano and then gazing wistfully out the window. Understatement is a beautiful thing in a movie! As the music of "Falling Slowly" wound down, the screen became a blur within seconds, and my nose needed tending to as well.
Despite the protests of a few people who complained that too little of the guy's and girl's attraction to each other is shown - did they really care for each other that deeply? - there's actually a scene that tells you the answer (on her part, anyway), if you know Czech. I don't, and I had to read up on her response to his question "Do you love your husband?". She replies in Czech, "The one I love is you." Add the setting of Irish sea-cliffs, the meaning of her untranslated answer to him would leave anyone breathless.
I re-read Salon's review and still very much like what it highlights - the delicacy and modest tones of the film, the strength of the characters - particularly the girl's - and the very real and difficult lives they lead. The film "reminds us -- particularly those of us over 40 -- how complicated young people's lives can be: When most of your life is still ahead of you, the fear of making the wrong choices can be a burden, even more so when you have a child."
A friend said the film has a weak title. "Once," it's too simple, too easy, she said. But when you pair it with the movie's tagline - "How often do you find the right person?" - the title is perfect.
Rainy days leave me pensive, and to settle my mind, I decided to read some poems I hadn't read in a while. Stanley Kunitz came to mind. I hadn't read his work since last summer, when I was visiting my brother in Illinois. It'd been about a month just after Kunitz had passed away at age 100. What a life he must've led. His later poems were very self-reflective, and I can only imagine the emotional and physical journeys he took. The beauty and sadness he experienced. Regret, loss. But he had his gardening, and his writing. Perhaps you need little more than that to find a measure of optimism, even if you're aware that change and emotions are agonizingly beyond your control.
"The Layers" by Stanley Kunitz
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
I spent the week before my Japan trip attending screenings at an animation festival held at the National Museum. At the behest of Frank in Ann Arbor, I made sure I got a ticket to watch "The Danish Poet," one of many international animated shorts featured at the festival. "The Danish Poet" won this year's Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, but I didn't pay much attention to it until Frank wrote to say that I should watch it if it ever showed in Singapore; he was certain that I would love it.
He knows me well. The short film brings up ideas about fate and chance, and the small, everyday details and events that are easily forgettable even if they aid in orchestrating a larger outcome. I loved every minute of it: whimsical art, a light but distinctive soundtrack, subtle injections of humor.
Of course, I didn't know that it's easily available on Youtube. No matter, this means I can watch it any number of times now. And I should also pull Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter off the shelf and finish reading all 1168 pages of it.
It's been three days since I returned from Japan, but I've yet to sort out my pictures and buckle down to write a detailed review of my trip. At least the luggage has been emptied, though some of its contents are scattered across my living room floor. I've also got to clean up the mess I left before I went on my trip, which includes mail, school handouts, CDs, books.
Of course, the CDs and books should be a pleasure to deal with. One of them is Stacey Kent's first Blue Note Records album, "Breakfast on the Morning Tram." There are two beautiful French covers, "Ces petits riens" and "La Saison Des Pluies" but the track that I play on repeat is her cover of Stevie Nicks' "Landslide." It's a sad one, and if you've read this blog long enough, you'll know that sad songs are the kind that hit me hardest.
I love the questions the speaker in the song asks, because I know so many who've asked the same ones -
Oh, mirror in the sky - What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
I don't know, I don't know
Listen to it here and make of it what you will.
And since I love coincidences and roundabout connections, I have to mention that one of the lyricists Stacey Kent selected for her album is novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, who wrote four songs about relationships, all narrated by travelers. In Japan, I read his recent work, Never Let Me Go. And while I was away, I received in the mail a DVD of "Remains of the Day," the 1993 film based on Ishiguro's novel.